Smelly Compost

Cover the surface with grass cuttings or bark or something else a bit drier than the mushy stuff flies like. Put a cover or lid on it.

Turn it more often and add more browns. Some cardboard, shredded paper etc.

What's on your heap? I can rarely smell mine at all. Household stuff can occasionally niff, and if you're going to add seaweed...

my understanding is that with compost you need a mixture of carbon rich ('brown' matter) and nitrogen rich ('green' matter) i read the other day that there needs to be four times as much carbon rich stuff -dunno about that though.

In answer to your question if you compost smells it maybe too rich in green stuff, so add more brown -ie: shreaded paper or cardboard, as Zazen999 said, this will slow things up but should stop the heap smelling. The other possibility is it might be something you're trying to compost. You should be avoiding meat, dairy and non vegetarian animal poo. Also spicy food may kill the micro-organisms you're trying to encourage to break stuff down.

What do you put on your compost heap?

Currently nothing as I always remember my grandparents heap stinking! I would like to start one though


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Everything stank in the old days.

you can add pine wood pellets then you don't have to worry about adding cardboard etc .... add 10% of pine pellets to the bin contents ...

lots of places on google and its cheap ...

here's an example:

The Yard: Wood Pellet Bedding

Adding the wood pellets sounds like a good idea. I wonder if adding straw would work as well?


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Whereas cardboard is free...

Any browns help...it's the browns that make up the volume and the greens that speed up the process.

At £4.50 for 12.5kg the pellets sound quite good.

I have googled but cant seem to find much (I know someone is gonna say otherwise theres loads), has anyone here used them instead of cardboard.?

I know cardboard CAN BE free if you have access to it or allowed to take it but at only 10% these pellets are convenient and reasonable.

So whats peoples experiences?

there is a bit about the wood pellets in this video:



use the rockdust (available from B&Q ... £5.98 for a 10kg bag),

and also add 4-5 tablespoons of Organic unsulphered Blackstrap Molasses mixed with 3 litres of water (available from most health shops) .... that feeds the microbes

if you use cardboard, you have to use the correct type, and you have to add 40% in volume to the bins .... thats why wood pellets are easier

I really don't see the point in buying stuff to make compost, when it happens naturally. All you need is 'roughly' equal parts of green to brown, and to keep it moist.

The heap you're on about, Mumbles was smelly as it was breaking down via anaerobic activity - as above, turning it more often and introducing more browns help keep the air in the heap and working a lot faster.

Wood pellets/shavings take a long time to break down - I generate quite a lot of woody waste (~330L a month (I keep chickens - the covered run has a concrete floor and wood chip / shaving filling). Despite these having more surface area than a wood pellet, they still take a long time to break down. I've left one dalek full of the bedding mixed with chicken poo (which, being high in nitrogen really does kick start composting) - and it still took a year to break down to somewhat useable compost. Compared to another dalek, and the introduction of more greens, I had useable compost in 3 months, turning often and watering the heap with diluted urine a lot.

I'd listen to zaz on this, as I've seen evidence of her hot composting heaps recently, that I believe break down to useable compost in a matter of weeks... Basically, the hotter you get the heap, the faster it breaks down - and by mixing it all up, with roughly the right ratios - you're sorted.

No need to buy in extra items that all have their toll on the environment, when everything you need is readily available. If you don't have cardboard - shred / tear / scrunge your junk mail and use that instead.

Correct type? *blank look*

Any tape, staples or plastic coating on the cardboard will not rot and you can simply remove once the cardboard has broken down. Inks used to print now are created from vegetables, and is quite safe to compost. There's a few master composters on the forum, who I'm sure will have more information on the subject.